I was not a regular with TV shows or programs before I started my Walden program, but Walden program has made time for entertainment even stricter. I chose to look at a Nigerian movie so that I can contribute our kind of context to the class. Its about 2 hours home video, but I just caught in on a brief period, 3 scenes to be precise.
Movie seen with sounds turned off.
Scene 1: Three young females sat down playing a local game and suddenly a car arrives in the horizon and all three of them ran to receive the passengers which happened to be a young man and a young woman. They all showed excitement on their face and the swiftness of their movement. All five of them walked back a short distance to the house. The compound had a man who sat down and and conversed with them all and a woman also came in from within the house and joined the conversation. They were all happy, and these was depicted by their grins, laughters and eye contacts. The car passengers brought some gifts and cash for the residents, especially the seeming papa and mama figures after which they left.
Scene 2: Two young men came visiting. The elderly Man is always seated, while the elderly woman comes in to meet the conversation. This time, the atmosphere seem tense. The elderly woman seem to dictate what happens. She kept talking and one of the young females was very displeased and offended as expressed by her countenance. The two young men eventually left. The elderly woman acted as though to hurry them away.
Scene 3: The unhappy and offended young woman, is seen expressing her disgust at the two elderly people. She seem dissatisfied that the young men had been hurried away.
My Interpretation of the Scenes:
The elderly man and woman are the parents of the younger women and the relationship is in scene 1 is cordial, but scene 2 & 3 are non cordial.
What they are feeling in scene 1 is happiness, family togetherness, while scene 2 revealed contrary. Scene 2 seem to depict that the elderly woman is in charge.
Movie Scenes with voicing confirmed that they are a family but revealed that the father figure is blind. For the first scene, I was not sure if the young man or the young woman that arrived in the car is a member of the family that was visited. I just knew one of them was. It would have been clearer if I heard the conversations.
For the second scene, I was also unsure what the bone of contention was, I assumed, it could be business or relationship issue. Again, the voicing would have made it clearer. At the end, I could tell the elderly woman, being the mother is dictating to her daughters the kind of dates she approves for them.
If it were a show that I knew well, maybe, it would have been more predictable.
This week, one of the things that I learned about non verbal communication is that it could be ambiguous. One can imagine he knows what is said only to find out that he/she may be completely wrong because the situational context is what determines the interpretation of behaviors (O'Hair & Wiemann, 2012).
Secondly, my accurate guesses like happy and cordial versus unhappy and non cordial atmosphere were strengthened by the fact what I saw beyond what I heard is one of the things non verbals do, they reinforce verbal messages.
Reference
O'Hair, D., & Wiemann, M. (2012). Real communication: An introduction. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's.
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